Claims and Evidence

Claims and Evidence

AP Lang, Unit 1, Part 2

Essential Questions

●As a reader, how can you identify the writer’s position
and the way the position is supported?

●As a writer, how can you develop and support your own
position?

Claims

●The word claim can carry a sense of uncertainty: it is
not a statement of fact.

●A claim needs proof to be believed and accepted

●Claims are proven or supported through convincing
evidence and logical thinking (reasoning)

The Unending Conversation

●When writers formulate a position, they gather and
arrange their ideas about an issue to determine how their
views relate to others’ positions on the same issue

●We can refer to this as the “unending conversation”

●For others in the conversation to understand them,
writers need to clearly convey their positions

●They express their positions through claims -- statements
asserted to be true that are not obviously facts.

●Because a claim is not true by itself, it must be
defended.

Narrowing a Defensible Claim

Broad Subject: Physical Education

Narrowed Subject (in the form of a question): Should
physical education be required in high school?

Specific Position: It’s not a good idea to require PE in
high schools

Defensible Claim: Requiring PE in high school harms many
students more than it helps them.

Reread the Greta Thunberg Speech

●Thunberg’s broad subject is climate change, but what
might be her more narrow subject in the context of the
speech?

●What is her position?

●Identify one of Thunberg’s claims. Is it clearly stated
(explicit) or is it implied?

On Your Own

Begin brainstorming on a subject you would like to write about.
It needs to be a subject that is timely and relevant and will
provide enough material to create a thoughtful argument. Examples
include: climate change, racial injustice, school dress codes,
however, you are free to think of one of your own.

Choose one of the subjects, then, develop and explain your
position on the subject.

Once you have developed your position, then create a rhetorical
situation for this writing you are developing. With your
rhetorical situation in mind, try to express your key idea in a
claim that might serve as the basis of your argument. To arrive
at your claim, take yourself through the process modeled in this
presentation.

Possibilities

Context/Formats: Essay for a high school website, article
for a local publication, speech at a school board meeting

Audiences: Well educated adults, friends and neighbors,
students and faculty

Purposes: Present a strong expression of yourself and the
issues you care about, engage readers with an informative
text, present a reasoned argument

Evidence and Reasoning

Writers defend their claims with evidence and/or
reasoning. Without those, their claims would just
be opinions with no grounding in facts or logic.

Developing and Explaining Proof

●Evidence: information to prove an idea is valid

●You usually don’t form a claim first and then look for
proof, instead, you spend time thinking about a topic and
the information related to it, and then you use what you
learn to develop a position and claim.

●Once you develop a claim, the information that originally
introduced you to a subject becomes evidence for
supporting the claim.

●To strengthen your claim, you find more evidence.

Reasoning

●Reasoning: showing your audience how you think through
your argument and how your evidence supports your claim.

●Reasoning both leads to and extends from your claim.

●The entire process of gathering information, formulating
a claim, providing evidence to support the claim, and
using reasoning to explain how the evidence relates to
the claim is a cycle.

Feedback Loop Graphic

This graphic is
sometimes called a
“feedback loop”
because the steps in
the process are “fed
back” into the
process. Why is a
feedback loop
important to the
process of thinking
and reasoning?

Types of Evidence

Writers support their arguments with many
different types of evidence. These
different types of evidence serve different
purposes and have varying degrees of
reliability and usefulness.

Evaluating Evidence

●To create a well rounded argument likely to be accepted
by a diverse audience, you would do well to include
numerous types of evidence to support your claim.

●For examples, use page 26 of the English Language and
Composition Textbook.

On Your Own

Review the claim you developed on the basis of an argument
and the broad categories for context as well as the example
as to how a writer can use those broader categories of
thought to help find evidence. Also, review the choices you
made about the rhetorical situation.

Use the Types of Evidence chart as a model to help you
gather evidence you can use to support your claim.

See Canvas for the assignment details.